When I got to the house, I looked back at the woods for a moment just to actually convince myself it had all been done. Then I entered and took off my boots and coat. Pin was waiting anxiously for my report, but I didn’t go right to him. I had to make a fire first and feel the warmth on my face and hands. His body had been so cold in that sack, and now it was freezing in the water. Pin heard me and called out.
“Coming,” I said. I went to the cabinet and took out some rye. The whiskey warmed my stomach. I felt a lot better. “It all went smoothly,” I said, going into his room. “Just as we planned. It’s all done.” I poured him a drink.
“Good,” Pin said. “Now let’s put it all out of our minds and go back to the way things were.”
“I’ll drink to that. Of course, it’ll be a little while before Ursula … shit,” I said, looking over in the corner.
“What’s the matter?”
“That damn leg. We forgot all about it.”
“No problem,” he said, after a short pause. “You’ve got a fire going out there, haven’t you?”
“Right.”
“Just throw it right in.”
“Good thinking,” I said and picked up the leg. I brought it out, opened the grate, and threw it in over the logs. Just then, the phone rang. It was Ursula calling from the library.
“Has there been any call?”
“Nothing.”
“Miss Spartacus came to work; but she doesn’t look well at all. She’s been coughing all morning.”
“Damn stupid of her.”
“I want to come home, but I hate to leave her.”
“It’s probably not too intelligent of you to be around her anyway. I’m sure what she has is very contagious. You’ll get it and then you’ll give it to Pin and me.”
“I can’t stand the silence in here. All I do is think and think and think.”
“Ursula, if you’re fishing for me to tell you I want you home, I want you home. Does that help?”
She was quiet for a moment and then she said, “I’m going to tell her that I can’t stay. Maybe she’ll be smart and close the library for the rest of the day.”
I told her to do it and hung up. A few minutes later, the phone rang again. It was Ursula with a new problem.
“What if Stan comes to the library to see me?”
“What if he does?” I said, imagining him swimming up to the hole in the ice, pulling himself out of the pond, shaking himself off like a dog, and walking downtown to meet Ursula.
“Well, I won’t be here. I’ll be home.”
“So he’ll call you at home, Ursula,” I said in the same tone of voice I’d use if I were talking to a complete moron.
“No,” she said. There was a recognizable note of determination in her voice. “It’s better if I keep busy. At home I’d only drive you crazy and myself as well.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. This time I hung up before she could add another thing. I went back and told Pin all about her. “It’s not going to be easy with her for a while.”
“It’s all right. We can deal with it.”
I wanted to do some more work on my poem and sat down to do the writing. The words weren’t coming easy. My mind kept drifting. Then, approximately twenty minutes later, the phone rang again. I was in a rage. If it was Ursula and she was going to go through her idiotic indecisions again, I was determined to hang up on her immediately. It was Ursula, but she had something entirely different to say; something quite disturbing.
Chapter 18
“SLOW DOWN,” I SAID. “YOU’RE TALKING SO FAST I can’t understand a word.”
“It’s Ralph Wilson. He stopped in to see me and they’re going to drive me home. They want to speak to both of us.”
“Why? What … I don’t …”
“The car, the car. I just told you, Leon. Didn’t you understand me?”
“How can I understand you when you babble into the phone and to someone else at the same time? What about what car?”
“Stanley’s car. They found Stanley’s car.”
I put my hand over the earpiece of the receiver as if I could keep the words from coming out. Then I turned to Pin.
“She says they’ve found Stanley’s car.”
“How? When?” I gestured for him to be patient and put the phone to my ear again. Ursula was still trying to carry on two conversations. I shouted for her complete attention.
“Are you sure about that? How did they find his car?”
“We’ll answer all the questions as soon as I get home, Leon.”
“I don’t understand. Why are they bringing you home now?”
“I told you. They have some questions. We’ll be there in a few minutes,” she added and hung up before I could ask anything else. I held the receiver for a moment and then hung up and told Pin.
“There’s no reason for any panic. Their finding the car doesn’t mean anything. Go throw some cold water on your face. You look flushed and they’ll want to know why. Calm down, will you.”
“Right, right,” I said and did what he told me. I was sitting in the living room when Ursula and the police arrived. Along with Ralph Wilson was an old-timer, Pappy McGraw.
“How you been gettin’ along, Leon? I just was tellin’ your sister here how’s I haven’t seen you for some time now.”
“Fine, fine, I’ve been getting along fine,” I said. I made no attempt to invite them into the house. I thought we’d just talk in the corridor. Ursula took off her hat and coat quickly. I could see she was quite excited. “My sister says you found her boyfriend’s car?”
Ralph Wilson spoke with an official voice. “As soon as you called, we checked with motor vehicles and got his plate number and make of car. I handled it myself. It was a ’70, not a ’71.”
“Everything’s computerized these days.”
“Sure the hell is,” Pappy said.
“Where did they find the car?”
“Up in the ski hill parking lot.”
“How did you find it?” I asked, swallowing hard. A sense of frustration and anger began building in me. It would be a damned efficient son of a bitch like Ralph Wilson who would find Stan’s car so quickly.
“On my routine checkup,” he said, not even a note of pride in his damned officious voice. “As soon as I got the make on the car, I started doing my rounds, checking the village and the surrounding area.”
“But what made you think of going up there and checking the ski hill?” I tried to sound interested in his police skills.
“There’s a restaurant and bar up there, a nice lounge too. Lots of people go there. There are rooms up there. It’s a ski lodge, you know.” I nodded.
“Then you found him?” I looked to Ursula. She was shaking her head.
“Oh, no,” Ralph said. “He wasn’t anywhere around. I checked the entire place. The automobile was locked and left in the lot.”
“He could have been in one of the rooms, as you suggested,” I said, avoiding Ursula’s gaze.
“No, I checked. No one could even recall seeing him up there.”
“Then … I don’t understand.”
“Well, neither do we,” Pappy said.
“Your sister doesn’t see any reason why Mr. Friedman would go up to the ski hill, being he has a wooden leg and all,” Ralph said. “Did he mention anything to you that might throw some light on it?”
I pretended to give it some thought, bit the inside of my left cheek and tilted my head.
“No, no, can’t remember any mention of it. He might have just gone up there to look at the action. That’s all I can think of.”
“I see.”
“Of course, he certainly could have met someone up there and traveled off with him or her. That would explain why he left the car there.”
“It’s a logical explanation,” Pappy said, looking from me to Ursula. She looked hopeful but confused. There was a moment of silence during which I felt Ralph was studying me.
“Yes, it’s logical,�
� he finally said, “but there are other possibilities.”
“What do you mean?” Ursula said quickly.
“No sense in guessing,” Ralph said. “Now, you’re sure there weren’t any arguments, not between you and Mr. Friedman and not between Leon and Mr. Friedman?”
Ursula looked at me.
“Nothing that I know of, no.”
“Well, we’ve got a good description of him from you and from his aunt,” Ralph said.
“This sure is a big house,” Pappy said. It was a statement purely from left field, but I welcomed it.
“We don’t use all of it.”
“Just the two of you,” Pappy said nodding at the walls. Ursula shot a terrified glance at me. I could see she didn’t want any mention of Pin at this point.
“That’s why we don’t use all of it,” I said, smiling. Ursula breathed relief.
“OK,” Ralph said, reaching for the door behind him. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Please,” Ursula said. “The moment you know anything, anything at all.”
They both said good-bye and left. The moment the door closed, Ursula’s expression changed. She looked like a small child again. “Now I’m really worried,” she said.
“Now I’m not,” I replied and started for the kitchen.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, c’mon, Ursula. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? He left his car up there and went off with someone. Probably a girl he met at the lounge.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You mean, you don’t want to believe it. There’s a difference.” She followed me into the kitchen. “Let’s have some tea and relax. Once you get a chance to think this thing out intelligently, you’ll see I’m right.”
“But what do you suppose Ralph Wilson meant by ‘other possibilities’?”
“Nothing. He was just being dramatic and overly important. Don’t you remember him in high school? He was always one of those hall monitors, ready to turn someone in for cutting into line or pushing. I never liked him.”
“Still, it makes me shiver,” she said, embracing herself.
“The tea will warm you up. Go into the living room and sit by the fire I made. I’ll bring it in.”
“I think Mrs. Spartacus closed the library once she saw I was really going home and she’d be alone…. She looks terrible. I was afraid she’d die right there.”
“I can’t think of a better place for a librarian to pass away, can you?”
“Oh, Leon, you’ve got such a dry sense of humor, just like the doctor had.”
She went into the living room. I thought about the snow filling up my footprints in the backyard, and I smiled at the clever way I had handled my return from the pond. I had taken great pains to step in my own footprints, thus making it look as though someone had gone into the woods but had not returned. Later, when Pin and I could sit and relax alone, I planned to tell him all about it. He enjoyed those kinds of details. He had given me a plan, but it had only been in a sort of outline form. I had filled it in, and at the moment, I was very proud of my work.
Somehow, I thought, this is all going to find itself in my epic poem.
“Pin’s in his room,” I called. I knew she’d be wondering about him. “I’m going to put some rum in your tea. That’s sure to make you feel better. Then I’ll get Pin and the three of us will relax together. Just like old times, eh?”
“Whatever you think, Leon,” she said in a very tired voice. “I don’t feel like doing a thing.”
“There’s nothing for you to do. I’ll have you warmed up in a little while,” I said. I started to whistle. I remember having this feeling of elation, this tremendous surge of optimism. I was tapping the teakettle lightly with a spoon, getting her cup and saucer ready, dancing and swaying as I took down the bottle of rum from the cabinet over the sink. In my mind things weren’t going to just be as they were before, they were going to be better than they had been before.
“How are you doing?” I shouted out to the living room. There was a moment of silence. Then she answered, straining for volume.
“OK, but your fire’s just about died out.”
“I’ll be right in there to build it up,” I sang out. The thought was just beginning to fight its way out from some dark passage of my mind and broke out into my consciousness when Ursula replied.
“It’s all right. I’ll do it. I need to do something,” she said. I had the kettle still in my right hand and I froze in position. There was no scream. My heart was pounding. I was about to relax, believing it had burned up in the fire. Then I heard the crash of china, some of the knick-knacks on the mantel above the fireplace. That was followed by silence. I turned and waited. More silence. Carefully, I put the kettle down on the stove and turned to the doorway. When I stepped out into the living room, Ursula was standing there looking down at the wooden portion of Stan’s leg in her hands. It was charred some, but otherwise pretty much intact. Perhaps it had been treated with something to prevent it from burning. Perhaps the fire hadn’t taken to it. I don’t know, but there it was.
I’ll never forget the look on Ursula’s face at that moment. She looked up at me with an expression of such awe and horror that even I was suddenly taken with the grotesqueness of what had occurred. Her mouth opened as if she were voicing a great scream. The skin of her face pulled back, twisted, wrinkled. Her eyes squirmed, closed and opened with slow movements. It was as if she were trying to focus in on something. She looked down at the leg again and then dropped it at her feet. I wondered if it had been very hot to the touch. She backed away, staring down at it, all the while not making a sound. I took a few steps forward and looked down at the leg as if I were seeing it for the first time myself.
“Where’s Stan?” she said, her voice high-pitched, straining. All I did was shake my head. “What have you done?” There was such a mixture of fear and pity in her. I had never seen anything like it. I actually stepped back, shaking my head. I wanted to feel as outraged as she was. I couldn’t stand being on the defensive. The first idea that came to my mind was, it wasn’t my fault.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Pin. Pin must know,” I added. I even nodded my head for emphasis, just the way I used to when Ursula was a little girl. “Pin will tell us,” I heard my little boy’s voice say. “Pin knows everything, Ursula.”
Did she scream? I really can’t remember. I know it sounds stupid, but there were so many thoughts going through my mind at the time and I heard so many voices screaming at me from the past. My mother was shouting about her rug being messed up by the ashes of the charred leg. My father was losing his patience over my poor interest in a medical profession. Ursula was having a temper tantrum because I just sat and stared at her silently, pretending to be Pin. All these memories rushed down on me at once. So you see, it’s not so unreasonable for me to have forgotten whether or not she screamed.
She ran out of the room and up the stairs, pulling on her own hair as she rushed by me. I remembered that. Then the whistle on the teakettle began. Those details are clear. I walked back into the kitchen and turned off the stove. My hand was shaking. I stood there for a long time thinking, going back over every detail of the afternoon. All my care and caution, all my cleverness destroyed by one dumb action. It really wasn’t all my fault either. It was his. He had made the suggestion. He should have known better.
“You,” I said, busting into his room and pointing at him seated in his chair. “You who always considers the counters, the obstacles, the difficulties first; it’s your fault.”
“What’s my fault?”
“The leg. You told me to throw it in the fireplace. You told me to do it.”
“So?”
“She found it. It was your idea. YOUR IDEA!” I screamed. He smiled at me. The conceited, pedantic bastard smiled at me.
“Calm down, Leon. This is no way for a rational man to act. Think of your father, of his coolness, his sureness in times of great crisis.”
�
�Screw his coolness, damn his rational mind. Ursula found the leg. She knows.”
“Everything?”
“Not everything, but she knows.”
“You should have checked to be sure the thing had burned up.”
“She knows!” I shouted. He didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to deal with me when I was in such a state. I could see that on his face. “Damn you,” I said and left, slamming the door behind me.
I approached the stairs gingerly, trying to understand what had gone wrong with such a perfect plan. Everything had seemed so well done. I looked back at Pin’s closed door. On the floor of the living room, the charred leg remained, defiant, confident, a part of him that had lingered to destroy us. I rushed back and picked it up, slapping it many times against the stone of the fireplace. It chipped some, but it didn’t crack.
“Damn you,” I shouted again, and I threw the leg at Pin’s door. It left a mark, a black ash spot. “Damn you,” I muttered under my breath, and I walked back to the stairs. I looked up. They suddenly appeared very steep and very difficult to ascend. I began to go up, taking each step slowly, my eyes fixed ahead at the doorway to Ursula’s room.
Chapter 19
SHE WAS SITTING IN THE DARK. I LOOKED AT HER, SEATED there on the bed, her hands in her lap, staring out at me. I couldn’t see her face, but I could see her rigid posture. I spent a few moments standing there, waiting to see what she would say. I had no plan in my own mind, no idea how I would start or what my angle was going to be. I kept thinking, however, that I was now in this terrible spot because Pin had told me to throw the leg into the fireplace.
“Now listen,” I began, stepping into the room. “I know how this thing looks to you. I can just imagine what’s going through your mind,” I added, and I laughed. It was a very artificial laugh, and I regretted it immediately. “But there is really no reason for you to act this way.” She didn’t say anything. I reached over and switched on a small lamp in the corner.
Slowly, I walked further into the room until I was standing very near her. I wanted to look at her face. Although I was a little to the right, she continued to stare straight ahead. She blinked every few seconds, but that was the only movement visible. Her hands remained clasped in her lap. I deliberately brushed up against her right shoulder. She didn’t turn and she didn’t say anything.
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